Hypocrites on Paying Taxes
Who do the Democrats think tax cheats are cheating?

By Jonah Goldberg


During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden insisted that paying taxes is a patriotic duty. No, scratch that. He said that supporting a tax hike was the American thing to do. “It’s time to be patriotic,” he told America’s putative tax slackers. When asked whether he might be questioning the patriotism of people who don’t want higher taxes, Biden, as is his wont, took things to the next rhetorical level. Forget patriotism, said Joe, paying higher taxes is a religious obligation to help your fellow man.

So the senator who gave an average of $369 a year to charity over the previous decade fulfills a religious obligation by cutting a tax check to Uncle Sam—a check he’s required to cut by law.

It’s always perilous to take Biden’s statements too seriously, but it does seem eminently fair to say that his comments reflect a common, though perhaps not universal, attitude among Democrats. Taxes aren’t a “necessary evil” so much as a joyous affirmation of the possibilities of government and the lifeblood of a more hopeful society. “Taxes are what you pay to be an American”—like “membership fees,” says Democratic language guru George Lakoff.

President Obama merely says taxes are necessary to “spread the wealth,” which is better for everybody. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman frames the issue more reasonably: “Nobody likes paying taxes . . . (but) most Americans also care a lot about the things taxes pay for.” In other words, paying taxes—and raising taxes, in Krugman’s view—is the adult, serious, morally responsible thing to do. Government needs every last penny, and holdouts must be smoked out.

Now, whatever the best articulation of liberal attitudes toward taxation may be, reasonable people can agree that Democrats inject a lot of moralizing, righteousness, and finger-wagging into the issue.

As one leading Democrat put it: “Make no mistake, tax cheaters cheat us all, and the IRS should enforce our laws to the letter.”

That Democrat was then-senator Tom Daschle in 1998. The same Tom Daschle, we’ve since learned, who failed to pay more than $100,000 in back taxes for perks he received as one of Washington’s most relentless influence-peddlers—that is, until he realized he might receive a job in the Obama administration spending the money most Americans conscientiously send to Washington.

Daschle’s hardly alone. Recently confirmed Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also failed to pay taxes he owed (even though he surely must have known he owed them) until it became politically expedient to pay them. Now he runs the IRS. Take that, suckers.

Meanwhile, Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), chairman of the supreme tax-writing body in America, the House Ways and Means Committee, is under investigation for, among other things, dodging taxes. His excuse for his admitted mistakes is that he was sloppy and ignorant, but not criminal. Geithner and Daschle make similar noises.

But doesn’t that miss the point?

When moralizing conservatives get caught, say, cheating on their wives or challenging stall mates to robust Greco-Roman wrestling in airport bathrooms, liberals justifiably howl at the hypocrisy of it all. When liberals fail to pay taxes it’s merely, to borrow an old catchphrase from Daschle, “sad and disappointing,” but ultimately not that big a deal. If Democrats are serious about their arguments for raising taxes, shouldn’t they be downright giddy about paying what they already owe? And shouldn’t they loathe tax cheating more than anything?

When he was still running the Democratic Party, Howard Dean made fighting hypocrisy his top priority. “Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings.”

Well, I hear a lot of lecturing from Democrats about why I should be ashamed for not liking taxes more because “the children” need it. Rep. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.) defended the so-called stimulus bill last week by saying it “shelters the homeless, and heals the sick. It helps us to look forward to the day when we beat our swords into plowshares.”

By the Democrats’ own logic, not wanting to pay for that is selfish, unpatriotic, and immoral. Who do they think tax cheats are cheating?

“I will use whatever position I have in order to root out hypocrisy,” Dean promised. “I’m not going to be lectured as a Democrat—we’ve got some pretty strong moral values in my party, and maybe we ought to do a better job standing up and fighting for them.”

Yes, I would like to see that myself. That would be change I could believe in.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

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Liberals are people that will believe anything twice.

change you can believe in...lol..he should have sent..CHANGE..what you will have left in your pocket when i get through with your stupid ass's

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everything i print write or show on here is a complete and utter lie..i cant help myself i am a terminal liar..all of this shit is just fiction and made up for entertainment purposes ONLY..

we will be like the South Park episode, homeless, change, change, gotta any change?

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.Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.
Harry S. Truman

a few things a man needs in life...the first is to be incorporated.the second is to have a great accountant..the third is to have a great lawyer.can you afford anything but the best?

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everything i print write or show on here is a complete and utter lie..i cant help myself i am a terminal liar..all of this shit is just fiction and made up for entertainment purposes ONLY..

Yup. You left out intelligence, common sense, compassion, love, And did I mention common sense. The amount of common sense you lack is enormous. If one lives a constructed common sense life, there definently would be no need for lawyers, and great accountants sometimes steal one blind. I have this inane reasoning from what you have described above and from what I can garner from the gist of your posts, you are a greatly dissilusioned, selfish, lonely, pathetic excuse for a human being. It must really suck to be you.

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

crooked politicians? No way.......

i went into the local hydro shop. owned by a liberal.nice lady but stupid.she was talking about how wonderfull obama is .she was saying. well he knows what it is like to be discriminated against by both white and black people.i said to her ' its a damn shame he dont KNOW as much about economics.she didnt think was was funny.her responce was .he has people he hires for that.REALLY?just like bush had so called experts hired as economic advisers? she shut up..LOL

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everything i print write or show on here is a complete and utter lie..i cant help myself i am a terminal liar..all of this shit is just fiction and made up for entertainment purposes ONLY..

You're comparing Obama to Bush on picking advisors, and you claim to have a 180 IQ?

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Life is good, the water is sweet. The ground keeps moving beneath my feet.

Well clearly Bush did a better job, we didn't hear about how 3 of his picks were tax cheats (those UNPatriotic Assholes, roflmao) and how another one was a corrupt politician, and how 2 others were D.C. Insiders.

What I still don't get is how the hell whoever did the vetting could fail to pick up on the fact that those three were tax cheats, especially after O'Biden was running around saying that paying taxes was "Patriotic."

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Libertas inaestimabilis res est - Liberty is a thing beyond all price. | Sic Semper Tyrannis

the same liberal hydro shop owner said.well if you make over 250K a year i dont feel sorry for those ass holes if they get taxed to death.they should have to pay more tax.
i said uh. obongo just hired three millionaires that are all tax cheats on his cabnet.if they cheat on their tax and dont pay and they run the government why should anyone pay tax? she shut up again?
why is that liberals are too stupid to debate a issue to they always resort to name calling.
i dont mind.i have broad shoulders

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everything i print write or show on here is a complete and utter lie..i cant help myself i am a terminal liar..all of this shit is just fiction and made up for entertainment purposes ONLY..